


when the hardest part is over

by throughfire



Series: Buck and Eddie [10]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23769322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/throughfire/pseuds/throughfire
Summary: “It’s okay,” Buck rasps out, tight against Eddie’s ear. “We got you back. We got you. You’re safe.”It sounds like he’s reassuring himself as much as Eddie – might even be saying it for Christopher’s sake even though the boy is blissfully unaware of what’s happened tonight. A mantra spoken to the night like a victory speech, a reminder that it could take nothing away from them.(Coda to 3x15)
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz
Series: Buck and Eddie [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1630543
Comments: 119
Kudos: 911





	when the hardest part is over

Bobby drives from the hospital. The radio’s on at a low volume and the LA lights flicker past soothingly outside the window.

Eddie’s chest doesn’t feel quite right. It’s _fine_ , the doctors checked him over thoroughly, but they don’t have the right tools to measure emotions with – can’t pinpoint what it is that makes the space inside his ribcage feel hollow and overflowing all at once. He doesn’t blame them for that.

Fear and adrenaline are strange things, and when they recede they’re even worse. It has all boiled down to a painful knot inside that chest of his, now, and breathing feels wrong, as though he shouldn’t be doing it, as though he has no right to be here after what he just went through. He keeps doing it, though. Finds more and more purchase in the air-conditioned chill of the vehicle with every inch that they get closer to home, and finds himself filling his lungs up completely for the first time in hours when the house finally comes into his view.

Bobby says a few parting words. Overwhelming, paternal kindness interlaced with a weak threat of them getting fired if they come into work any time soon. Eddie expects a protest to snap back through the air, something affronted but playful and laced with professional pride, but it doesn’t come. Buck just slips out of the backseat and shuts the door quietly, then stands on the curb, waiting, until Eddie has joined him out there.

The house is quiet, of course. A light left on in the living room; another one in the hall outside the bedrooms. Eddie goes straight to Christopher’s door and tilts it open further than the previously small crack, and his eyes sting with the threat of tears at the very scent of his son, the familiar hints of strawberry shampoo and lavender detergent that always dance delicately in the room. He swallows thickly, and sinks down onto his knees next to the bed, where the scents are even stronger, where the boy himself is nestled in the middle of it, wrapped up like the vital source of every good thing in the world.

He presses a kiss to the boy’s forehead, but doesn’t quite manage to bite back the sob that ruptures from that tight, sensitive spot in his chest. It comes out breathless, but it feels a lot like there are splinters of his heart in that choked noise – every fear swallowed back down during the night now fighting its way back out with sharp, realistic feet braced against his throat and slicing it up from the inside. His voice is entirely shredded and carries no more than a whisper when he presses an _I love you_ to that same spot on the boy’s forehead.

“So much, Chris,” he gets out. “I love you _so_ much.”

Christopher doesn’t stir. He sleeps on quietly, his breathing heavy and even and comforting to listen to, to watch where it moves the boy’s ribcage gently. Eddie stays there. Drinks in the sight and allows it to soothe every nerve ending in his entire body; covers his mind with it like a film, a protective blanket, a filter to blur out everything else.

Minutes must have passed when he finally gets up, rising to his feet quietly and stealing one last glance of his son, safe in bed, before making his way out of the room again. Buck is standing in the doorway, lit up from behind and leaning with his entire body against the frame there, as though he needs the support in order to remain standing. Eddie can’t see his expression, but he can sense the anxiety. It’s visible in the strained line of those shoulders and in the tight hold Buck has of his own body, the way his arms are wrapped around his own front as though he’s scared that something will come loose and fall away from him if he lets go.

It’s not until Eddie is passing him in that doorway and looking up at him briefly that he realizes that Buck must have been standing there all along; that he can’t have let Eddie out of his sight for a second since Eddie was released from the hospital.

The hallway light catches on the sharp lines of Buck’s features, now, highlighting half of his face and making the unshed tears along his lash lines shine. He has curled a hand – seemingly reflexively – around Eddie’s wrist as though to stop him, and now they’re caught in the doorway as though they’re framed by it, painting the scene of a breathless, halted aftermath that neither of them knows how to navigate. A mess to be hung in a museum somewhere for other people to analyze to pieces.

 _The slightly shorter one is in love_ , they’ll say. _The taller one has no idea._

“ _Eddie_ ,” Buck whispers, though even that is wrecked, his voice as ruined as Eddie’s to indicate that he must have been screaming tonight, too, and somehow that makes everything even worse, even harder to deal with. The thought of Buck standing high above him somewhere and calling out for him, perhaps thinking that Eddie was _gone_ , _that he’d left Buck behind_ , it’s too much.

He tips his weight forward; trusts Buck to catch it and is rewarded with strong, desperate hands slipping around his sides and holding him upright while their chests collide. He can hear Buck draw in a quivering breath right by his ear, can feel Buck draw him in even closer and simply clings to Buck in return. Breathes in another familiar scent, dark and musky with a hint of nondescript body wash from the station’s bathroom, and shudders under the onslaught of new emotions.

“It’s okay,” Buck rasps out, tight against Eddie’s ear. “We got you back. We got you. You’re safe.”

It sounds like he’s reassuring himself as much as Eddie – might even be saying it for Christopher’s sake even though the boy is blissfully unaware of what’s happened tonight. A mantra spoken to the night like a victory speech, a reminder that it could take nothing away from them.

They part eventually. Press rough palms to eyes and breathe shallowly into the dim light.

“Do you want tea or anything?” Buck asks awkwardly, still radiating anxiety. “Food? I can cook you something—”

“Just sleep,” Eddie breathes out, finding himself smiling slightly. There are still unshed tears lingering in Buck’s eyes, and he can feel wetness in his own, coaxed out by the care that Buck is conveying, the unfaltering affection that Buck exudes. “You look dead on your feet.”

Buck looks angered, then. His frown is almost comical. “Forget about _me_ , you’re the one who matters right now.”

There’s no forgetting about Evan Buckley, not ever. Eddie spends a moment contemplating how to voice that, how to tell Buck just how vital the memory of Buck was to him down there – how to explain that it was the thought of a future with Christopher and Buck that kept him fighting when his entire past and present was falling down on him, both literally and figuratively.

In the end, though, the moment just passes. He can tell from Buck’s expression that the man is expecting him to say something, to voice the train of thought that must have flitted across his own face in a vivid manner, but something holds him back. All he wanted when he was down in that hole was to get back to this, to his life with Christopher in which Buck is a constant but moving variable that fits in seamlessly whenever and wherever he wants to. Not for a minute did he think that he had to get back up to the real world just to put that bond to danger.

So he forces the words back down his throat, because he’s good at that. He has practiced the art of it for months. Then he moves away, out into the hallway, with his chest throbbing even more painfully.

“Eddie,” Buck whispers, though it sounds hopeless, as though he’s trying to catch a wisp of smoke in-between his fingertips and knows that he won’t succeed, and it’s just another wave of hurt against Eddie’s chest – this knowledge that Buck _knows_ that Eddie is keeping something from him, holding something back.

“Will you close the door to the guest room?” Eddie begs him, staring resolutely at the door in question. Carla always leaves it open a crack when she stays over, just in case Chris will need something from her during the night. “Don’t want to wake her up.”

Buck hesitates – seems to be debating whether to draw the conversation back and push Eddie to speak up or just let it drop – but ultimately deflates a little and shuffles over to close the door.

Eddie goes to the living room, grabs the cushions off the couch and drags them with him back to the hallway. Under Buck’s watching gaze he then proceeds to place the cushions out on the floor outside of Chris’s door, focusing intently on his own hands. They’re shaking, though neither he nor Buck address it.

“I’ll grab the blanket and some pillows off your bed,” Buck says softly, reading the situation silently, ever so in tune with what Eddie’s thinking.

Eddie pauses when Buck has gone, his hand curled tightly around the corner of a cushion and his breathing strained under the weight of everything, of every thought and every emotion. He can still feel Buck’s warmth lingering upon his skin, hidden in the threads of his shirt, and he spends a moment imagining that the scent of Buck is there, too, that it’s filling him up to the brim until every rotten part of him has been evicted and replaced; turned him into something wholly beautiful.

They work quietly when Buck comes out; set the pillows and blanket in order and then wordlessly fit themselves upon the makeshift bed. No discussion, no hesitation. No need for Eddie to say that he’d fall apart if Buck were to leave him tonight, because Buck’s making it clear that he’s not going anywhere. He’s curling a leg beneath himself, now, sitting on the edge of the tiny bed while Eddie lies down on his back. It’s a tight fit, even before Buck has laid down next to him, but somehow it feels just right.

The overhead lamp is still on, and the ceiling is far up. Eddie can breathe, here. He can leave whenever he wants to, _if_ he wants to. It’s a comfort to know that he doesn’t.

Buck looks down at him. His gaze is gentle. Soft. More vulnerable than Eddie has ever seen it before, which makes Eddie feel big and sharp and clumsy because he’s so scared of causing pain, of cutting ties, of being left alone if he slips up, if he _fucks up_ , but he doesn’t know how to live in this new world and not reach for everything he wants, how to go back to a life where he keeps everything bottled up.

His hand is still trembling when he touches the back of a finger to Buck’s knee. Buck’s is shaking just as bad when he places it on Eddie’s side, over the ribcage, where he can lean in over Eddie’s chest.

“Hey,” he says softly, brushing his other hand over Eddie’s temple. “How do you feel?”

Eddie finds himself looking at that hand when it leaves his skin again, examining it for damage when Buck draws it back. He still feels sharp. Jagged. Is a mess of mismatched memories and emotions that no one should have to deal with, yet here Buck is. Dumb and courageous, rushing into danger yet again.

“I’m so fucking glad that you weren’t down there with me,” he finds himself breathing out, even though the thought hasn’t crossed his mind until now. It’s true, though, the second he says it. Somehow, he’d rather take the utter terror of being down there alone over the prospect of being down there with Buck.

“ _I’m_ not,” Buck tells him, expression blank. “I wanted to go after you, but Bobby wouldn’t let me.”

Eddie isn’t surprised, though he is grateful. “I knew that you were up there, safe. That you would be the last person to give up on me – the last to give up hope. That helped.”

Buck nods. Blinks. Chews at the inside of his mouth. There’s obviously something going on his mind, something he’s working his way through, and Eddie doesn’t want to intrude, doesn’t want to dig around in memories or force Buck to unpack whatever it was that went on above ground while he was away.

He averts his gaze to the ceiling, high above and colored in a soft orange glow. Focuses on the feeling of Buck’s hand on his side, warm and heavy and comforting. He knows that that palm is full of care, of affection. That Buck loves him, someway. And he can live with that. He _gets_ to live with that. He has his beautiful son sleeping soundly in the next room, he has a family that ran themselves to the ground trying to save him tonight, and he has Buck’s hovering, worried form at his side, now, helping him through the aftermath and fighting the darkness with his inner light. He doesn’t really know what to do with all the gratitude that he feels; how to give it back.

“I watched this TV-show once when I couldn’t sleep,” Buck hums eventually, addressing his own hand upon Eddie’s side. “I don’t know if it’s actually true, but they said that it’s illegal to own just one guinea pig in Switzerland.”

Eddie’s instinct would be to tease him if the circumstances were different – if he weren’t so weighed down by exhaustion, if his mind wasn’t so muddled with thought and emotion – but it only takes one glance at Buck’s expression to realize that there’s more going on in that mind of his than random animal trivia. His eyes are still so vulnerable, so full of emotion and shining with everything that he hasn’t said yet, and he’s clutching so desperately to Eddie’s side that it almost hurts, now.

“I told Bobby about it last week – that apparently they get lonely, so you have to have two.”

Eddie hums to let Buck know that he’s listening, his interest piqued and his hand tightening around Buck’s knee. He savors the warmth, there. The safety that lies in Buck’s very presence.

“And Bobby said that the same thing applied to me – that that’s why he got me you,” Buck laughs bitterly, and his voice cracks awfully on the word _you_ , and all it takes, then, is one quick blink and then the first couple of tears are falling from his eyes. “It was kind of amusing then, but then you were _gone_ and I was alone and it really wasn’t funny anymore, Eddie.”

The last few words disappear as he collapses; his body succumbing to sobs that wreak his entire being and make him shake against Eddie’s side. A moment later, Eddie is dragging Buck down against his own body, willingly burying himself under Buck’s weight with tears burning in his own eyes and staining his cheeks as they tear themselves away forcefully from him.

He can’t believe that he almost lost this, that he almost never had it again.

“I’m here,” he says, and it’s his turn to reassure the both of them now, to establish the truth in the darkness so that it can’t take it away from them when it recedes and surrenders to the daylight. “I’m here.”

Buck just clings tighter to Eddie at that, and Eddie secures his arms around Buck’s back, clinging back as time ticks on quietly around them. He hooks an ankle around Buck’s, presses his knee in-between both of Buck’s, and runs his hand along Buck’s back, all the way from the neck to the bottom of the spine. He can feel the muscle and bone, the bumps of vertebrae and the rise and fall of the entire torso as Buck breathes heavily through emotion. They’re all signs of life, pressed delicately against his palm, and they somehow serve to prove his own vitality, his own solidity.

“This isn’t supposed to be about me,” Buck whispers against Eddie’s collarbone eventually, voice thick. “ _Fuck_ , I’m sorry.”

Eddie turns his head slightly, allows his mouth to move against Buck’s forehead when he says, “Most things are.”

“What?” Buck asks, tilting his face up a little, into the touch.

Eddie stops his hand at the nape of Buck’s neck, then, brushing his thumb against the bare skin there. “The only thing that kept me going when I was down there was the thought of getting back to my family. To Christopher. To the team. To you.”

“Me.”

“You. Every good memory I have of LA is centered around Christopher, and almost all of them involve you somehow,” he murmurs, tasting the truth upon his tongue and liking it. Liking the way his chest feels a little looser with every spoken word, with every piece of his heart relieved. “I wouldn’t want it any other way. I love you.”

Buck lifts his head, then, with his hand pressed to the center of Eddie’s chest and his eyes shining brighter than before, the emotion within them tinged with hopefulness. He hovers with his face a mere inch away from Eddie’s, raising his eyebrows over those expressive eyes and asking, “Oh, we’re saying it now, are we?”

“ _I_ am,” Eddie tells him, inexplicably calm. “You can do whatever you want.”

“I’ve only wanted to say it forever,” Buck reveals. “I just didn’t know if you wanted to hear it. Though I probably would have exploded by tomorrow evening if I’d had to keep quiet about it in the aftermath of tonight – if I hadn’t gotten to tell you how much you mean to me after I almost lost you.”

“You still have me,” Eddie smiles up at him. “You have me.”

Buck smiles back at him, touching Eddie’s face with two curious, ever-trembling fingertips, and says, “I love you.”

He’s beautiful, and he looks so happy, suddenly, despite everything that they’ve been through – everything that they’re _still_ going through – and Eddie can feel it too. The happiness is scratching at his consciousness, begging to be allowed in and be present as a current beneath the wild waves of everything else that Eddie is feeling. A guiding force to follow rather than something vicious to be dragged under by.

He allows it in – the happiness. Speaks with it in his voice when he says, “I’m going to kiss you tomorrow.”

Buck blushes slightly. Closes his eyes against Eddie’s smile and dips his head back in under Eddie’s chin, warm against Eddie’s collarbone. “Yeah?”

“As soon as the sun comes up.”

Buck taps a finger against Eddie’s chest, asking, “Why not now?”

“Because today’s been fucking _awful_ and I don’t want that association.”

“So sunrise it is,” Buck hums quietly. “I can wait.”

A moment later Buck is pressing a sneaky kiss to the bottom of Eddie’s throat, soft and featherlight and _everything_. Eddie smiles sleepily at the ceiling – feels like he’s sharing this secret with it. It’s another moment that should be hung in a museum at some point; a love for others to admire in a distant future, when Buck and Eddie have already grown old and gray.

*

Buck drifts fitfully in and out of sleep, pressed tightly against Eddie’s side. His arms sporadically tighten around Eddie’s waist, and his mouth moves with unintelligible words that are interspersed with Eddie’s name. Every few minutes he’ll tremble back into consciousness again; blink desperately until Eddie comes into focus and then breathe out heavily. It’s a continuous cycle, with nothing for Eddie to do but be there, hold him, cherish the way Buck feels against him, so warm and safe despite the uneasiness in that mind of his.

Eddie doesn’t sleep at all, despite the exhaustion, despite the mental collapse and the physical drain that the night has been. His hands are still shaking slightly where they’re pressed against Buck’s body, and the cocktail of past, painful memories and this reality that he came back to above ground isn’t mixed well within him – doesn’t travel seamlessly through his veins.

He doesn’t know how to balance himself out, so he simply listens to Buck’s mutterings against his own throat, and catalogues Buck’s breathing in an attempt to follow it, to sync them up. He’s attentive to every little shift inside of Christopher’s room and commits each proof of existence to his memory so that these new ones can battle the old ones – make them go back into their box where they can’t stir up more emotion within him.

An hour or so in, Chris’s movements become pointed. There’s a rustling of fabric coming from inside his room that sounds incredibly loud in the otherwise quiet house, and Eddie listens to it gratefully. Feels anticipation build up in his chest, just below Buck’s hand near his heart, when Christopher’s steps sound over the floorboards.

The boy comes out into the hallway, his face twisting up in confusion when his foot catches on the nearest couch cushion. He squints against the orange glow out there, and frowns adorably down at the mess of cushions and pillows on the floor, though a mere second later he’s laughing at the sight of the two men wrapped up in their blanket.

“ _Daddy_ ,” he says, full of melodic delight. “What are you doing?”

“Sleepover,” Eddie murmurs back, grinning wider than he has all night. He can feel Buck shift against him again, drawn out of another bout of restless sleep by Chris’s joy. He instinctively tightens his arm around Buck, and moves the other hand towards his son, wiggling his fingers. “There’s room for you too, come on Chris.”

Chris throws himself unceremoniously against Eddie’s free side, and Eddie is quick to catch him, to draw him in tight and tuck him under a strong arm, breathing in strawberry and lavender once more.

“This is _awesome_ ,” Chris beams, with his chin digging into Eddie’s ribs. “Hi Buck!”

“Hey buddy,” Buck hums back, voice worn. “Missed you today.”

“I missed you too,” Chris supplies in a soft tone, though he recovers quickly. “You can come with us and listen to dad at school on Friday though.”

Buck rubs his cheek against Eddie’s clavicle; his smile palpable there. “If he wants me to.”

Eddie brushes his thumb against Buck’s t-shirt, feels a shiver go through Buck’s body and grins at the ceiling again. Says, “Of course he wants you to.”

“ _Of course,”_ Chris echoes. He’s laughing again, undisturbed by the late hour and the odd circumstances. He’s burrowing in close to Eddie’s side, tucking his face in against Eddie’s ribs, now, and Eddie can feel his breath through the shirt. He finds it comforting.

Buck is lifting his head from Eddie’s collarbone, then, and moving his hand to drag a corner of the blanket over Christopher, tucking it around him safely. Once he’s done, he looks down at Eddie with a soft smile playing on his lips, saying, “The sun’s up.”

“He is,” Eddie grins, tightening his arm around his son. “He’s about to fall back asleep again, though.”

Buck nods. Hums, “Better kiss me quickly, then.”

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't seen the episode yet, and I didn't really edit this properly. I'm sorry if it's disappointing.


End file.
